The Best Vacation Ever Part 1

Tyler and I wanted to take our kids to Disneyland again this year, but I wanted our celebration to be a big one since we were celebrating paying off our house this year. After a lot of discussion we decided to take our kids to Disneyland, Sea World, and Lego Land. We love that our kids get to go on vacation with their grandparents, and this year Terry and Craig were so great to come along with us and help. Honestly, they planned and coordinated all the driving and hotels for us. I seriously just showed up for all the fun! 

We decided to drive to give us more flexibility to go to all the theme parks. I was a little worried how our kids would do spending basically three days in a car, but they did so well! They played games in the car, watched movies, and talked the whole way there. We only had one throw up incident the whole time! I call that a win!

The first day our goal was to get to Las Vegas. We stopped in St. George for lunch, and then drove the rest of the way to Vegas. 

 We stayed our first night in the hotel in Vegas and the kids' favorite part was going to swim in the hotel pool.

 The next morning we were up bright and early and ready for another day of driving.

*on the road again. Next stop... The beach!

Ok, is it just me, or does this picture scare you? Makayla was playing around with the snapchat filters, and seriously, this picture makes her look like she is a grown woman.

 We finally made it to Anaheim and drove straight to Huntington Beach. This was the kids' first time at the beach, and it might have been one of my favorite parts of the trip. All of the kids were so excited. It was so fun to see them experience something new for the first time.

 Caden loved collecting sea shells

 Daddy and Makayla were the first ones in the water.

 Brynnli was scared at first, but after some coaxing from Grandpa she was hooked.

 Caden took some warming up. He preferred to run away from the water.

 Here's some other pictures from our fun day at the beach.

*That's a real yawn mid picture from Brynn. She was such a trooper with her schedule being all out of wack. 

 And how do you beat that sunset? I loved it.

 After a few hours at the beach and dinner, we headed back to our hotel and made it just in time to see the fire works at Disneyland. We watched them from the rooftop of our hotel.

 Day 3 was our first day in Disneyland. How cute are these kiddos in their matching and coordinating outfits?

After seriously an hour in line to get through security and through the front gates, we were finally ready for our fun to begin. I do have to explain this part of the trip because it becomes important in understanding the next few days. When we finally got to the front of the line to get in the gates the first morning, the guy scanning out tickets said because their system was being weird, they would let us in the gates and take our pictures later. We went in and didn't think much of anything until we tried to get fast pass tickets and our tickets wouldn't work. This actually worked in our favor because we would just take out ticket to the ride and tell them we couldn't get it to work, and they would just let us on the ride. We went to customer service twice and they said they had it fixed, but it still didn't work. 

Meanwhile... we hit all of the major rides. We went on Splash Mountain and Kayla and I got soaked.

 We also met quite a few characters and got them to sign our autograph books.

 My favorite part was when Caden got to meet Donald Duck. He kept telling us before we even left on our trip that his favorite character was Donald and he was so excited to meet him.

 My whole goal of the trip this time was to try some new treats... because if you know me, you know I love treats. Our first treat of the trip were the Mickey shaped beginets... and they were just as wonderful as you could imagine.

 We enjoyed them while watching "Mickey's Magical Map"

 You can't go to DL and not spend time in Toon Town playing with all the fun stuff.

 I think by this point we were all feeling tired and ready to take a nap like Makayla.

 But not before going to the "Tiki Room" and enjoying a Dole Whip!

 We ended day 1 at Disneyland with a trip on the carousel which might have been Brynnli's favorite part.

 Can you really get more magical than Disneyland and Christmas time? The answer is no, no you can't.

 Every night Brynnli spent time reading from her favorite book about Jesus.

Apparently in Brynn's version of the Bible, there's Jesus, and dinosaurs, and dragons. Oh to have the imagination of a three year old!

Are you ready for Day 2 of fun?